Thursday, June 8, 2017

Word Count Thursday - 8 June 2017

Nooooo, I completely forgot about writing this out yesterday, dang it. Ah well, I'll try not to make that into a habit.

Things I worked on this week:

Chapter 10 from last week: 2655 words (completed at 4709 words)

Total for this week: 2655 words

What am I working on?

I'm hoping to work on chapter 11 and other things but other things got in the way a little, and are going to continue until mid June.

How do I feel about the process?

Excited, since I completed another chapter, and I'm finally at the plot's climax. Or one of them since I guess it's going to be an epic-length plot. Now I just need to tie off the ends in an exciting way to lead to the resolution and then I can give myself a break. This plot is part 2 of a trilogy, and wow, this one is taking longer than the first one for me to complete. Then again, I started the first one last summer in July when I wasn't very busy and completed it just a few weeks into November. I remember those updates during the school year were really hard for me to get through. Still, 20 chapters and each of them being at an average of 5k words each?

It wasn't quality at all, but it was the first time I've ever completed anything I started, at least when it comes to a novel-length work. Its sequel, however, proves to take me longer to finish. I started in December of 2016. I'm only halfway finished. I think. But I guess I shouldn't be too hard on myself since the purpose of even writing this is to "get all the bad work out of me so I know what not to do next time" according to my video production teacher in high school. The Creative Writing class from the spring semester helped me a lot in that regard, as well as helped me stay accountable in writing every week.

When I think about how much longer it's going to take me to complete the project, it's daunting. But I'm super glad I finished the first in the trilogy, despite how unrealistic it was for me to complete it in that span of time. I remember trying to meet personal deadline after another, trying to reach some finishing point that I didn't have much of an idea for since I'm not a plotter. But man, how well it was received by my little anonymous audience once it was finished was satisfying. For me to get there, it needed only one baby step at a time.

I've had to remind myself of that constantly lately since I expected to finish it when the semester ended. The key contributor for even finishing that first one was that I told myself I had to at least finish, and that's what I intend to do.

Though... I never intended it to evolve into a trilogy. I guess that part I could somewhat berate myself for.

What am I reading?

I haven't done a lot of reading. But I'm still in the process of reading the same stuff as last week.

What am I doing?

I'll share a bit of a narrative of the events:

This is where I show a bit of my nerdy/geeky/irresponsible side. I spent a good portion of yesterday and the day before playing this (competitive?) game I play. And it was glorious.

So, for some context, every week there's a rotation between teams of twelve, grouped up into three. These three are assigned colors: red, blue, and green; and are then forced to fight amongst each other. This week, my team color is green. My team leader was like, "Hey, let's go hit blue's side of the map. They're really close to us in points and we need to get ahead." Of course, with him being team leader we had to agree.

On the way there, we ran into the blue team. We fought them off and won. And then it happens again. And then again. We didn't think anything of it until a teammate said, "Hey, someone on blue's side is streaming their fight on Youtube." And then he linked it in our chat.

Of course, we had to watch. There was a two-minute delay so we were able to catch our last fight with them and two minutes is a huge difference competitively in the game, so it wasn't considered cheating that we were watching.

The fight wasn't even close. And then I overheard the blue team leader say, "Okay, we've been fighting green and we just keep losing. From this point on, we fight red. Remember, green's practice, red we fight." And, "We just keep losing and losing for the past few hours. This is really demoralizing."

At least both green and blue agree that red team this week is... really terrible. As for the blue team leader's last statement, I felt really horrible.

But I lightened up when I saw my character, dressed like a neon rainbow fairy queen with a weapon that looked like it came from a Hallmark Valentine's Day card, happened to "snipe" the person who was streaming the fights, someone who was dressed in all black and red complete with skulls and bones and chains. My teammates saw this and said, "It's like happiness hit him in the face so hard it killed him."